The Last Call (Bill Travis Mysteries, #1)

by George Wier

PROLOGUE The concrete-walled room had not seen daylight in eighty years. Its only visitors were the occasional mouse or dung beetle, which died of thirst or hunger shortly after happening along. There was a growing collection of the bones and husks of such spread around in little dried piles. The room’s furnishings—which consisted of little more than a small card table and a turn-of-the-century rocking chair—had been perfectly preserved in the dry, North Texas climate, and the rooms only permanent occupant, seated in the rocking chair, grinned vacantly in the dark, waiting to greet the first interloper to come along. The occupant was a skeleton, little more than fine clothing over crumbling, desiccated flesh and protruding bone. Had the skeleton still retained its meat and had blood still coursed through its now empty spaces, it would have been surprised at the sudden present that shushed through the inky blackness overhead and landed on its lap, cracking its pelvis and sending decades of dust flying. The present, a leather physicians bag, itself an antique, was partially open. The bag landed upside down and its contents spilled out onto the dust-laden trousers and slapped down onto the concrete floor with a dull thud. Perhaps if the occupant still had eyes with which to see and a light to see by, it would have seen the denominations of the bills in each deck of a hundred, and perhaps after a lifetime spent in earnest chasing after just such, it would have grinned even wid...

Great writing!

A man gets up into his late thirties and the chances are he stops looking and begins observing.

29nov19

I have a theory about paperwork: I’m certain it mates and reproduces during the night.

“How can I help you?” “Mr. Travis. I’m not sure you can. I’m not sure anybody can.” I’d heard this before. A few times it’s been true. It’s a marvel to me the whole spectrum of trouble that human beings can get themselves into. I suppose I’ve seen most everything.

“Just about anything can be untangled, if you know which string to pull.”

a den of

criminals of low order.

when they came face to face with a beautiful woman became slightly less articulate than your average garden squash,

I suppose from that moment I was in love. A dead man. No mourners, please, just shovel in the dirt and shut up.

Sometimes it’s best if a fellow just lets a woman say what it is she wants to say. All you have to do is let her know you’ve heard her.

appears to progress, there are some who still abide in the dark and heed no law except the grim laws of survival and revenge.

It’s like walking around with the Queen of Spades in your shirt pocket. It’s just asking for it.

I guess I was born expecting the best out of people and have never been not-disappointed since. Maybe I ought to change my ways of looking at things, you know?”

But it’s not just other people I expect more out of. It’s me, I reckon.

I never did like explaining myself. That’s sort of like going around asking people for a license to survive.

What is it in our nature that makes us think because we can't see danger immediately in front of us that we're going to be pretty much alright? I just don't know.

There are some that give credence to dreams. I always subscribe more to the philosophy that they are the drippings of experiential soup; nothing less, nothing more.

there were motivations there unknown and unknowable.

There is no greater thrill in life than to find that you are not only useful, but that you can help, and that your help matters.

!!! 4dec19

There’s nothing quite as liberating as not knowing one’s own limitations.

I could feel the electric current between the two of us, an effect of the attraction versus the distance. Like two huge celestial objects attracted together by gravity or magnetism but held apart by some greater force.

the only way to head off trouble was to face it head on. Doing anything else only tends to stack it up deeper further down the road.

I’m basically lazy, and I’ve found it far simpler to get along in life by looking, confronting, and stopping the stone before it gets too much inertia going down that long hill. Sometimes, if you wait too long before trying to stop it gets you nothing but flattened by it.

low-life scum of the earth.

A sorrier cutthroat never walked,”

Isn’t it interesting how when you think you’ve got things pretty well nailed down, they start jumping around again? For me that normally doesn’t happen. I don’t like it much. The room was still, but things were jumping.

desultorily